9-Jan-82 19:18:06-PST,1320;000000000001 Date: 9 Jan 1982 1918-PST From: SCHIFFMAN Subject: Upgrading a Z-19 to a H-89 To: info-micro at MIT-MC cc: schiffman A few questions to those of you who know about the Zenith/Heath machine (please reply to Schiffman@SRI-KL): I have a friend who has a Z-19 and would like to transform it into a CP/M runnable system. 1) Is the Heathkit upgrade package for the H-19 (to convert it to the H-89) equally applicable to the Z-19? (I'm pretty sure that the Z-19 and the H-19A differ only in the nameplate). 2) What does that package consist of? Is it only a handfull of parts or does it include new circuit boards? 3) With that upgrade kit, you get 16K of RAM. To get more RAM can you just plug in more chips, or do you need new circuit boards from Heath? 4) Given that you buy the Heath diskette controller, can you then get the floppies elsewhere (namely are the Heath floppy drives vanilla or are they somehow special)? Another way to phrase these questions is -- seeing I'm handy with digital electronics and microprocessors, how can I help my friend upgrade his Z-19 for the minimum amount of cash? Pointers to documentation will be appreciated. (I've already guessed that buying the upgrade kit manual from Heath for $5 would be a good start). -Allan ------- 9-Jan-82 20:34:24-PST,712;000000000001 Mail-from: ARPAnet host MIT-AI rcvd at 9-Jan-82 2034-PST Date: 9 Jan 1982 2325-EST From: James J. Dempsey Reply-to: JJD at MIT-MC Subject: Re: Upgrading a Z-19 to a H-89 To: SCHIFFMAN at SRI-KL In-Reply-To: Your message of 9-Jan-82 2227-EST My h89 contains three major circuit boards: 1. Video controller board (analog) 2. Terminal logic board 3. Cpu board The H19/Z19 (they are the same) contain 1 and 2. I believe the major component of the upgrade kit is the cpu board. The cpu board contains sockets for upt to 48K ram (4116s). FOr 64K you have to buy an upgrade board. Feel free to ask any more questions, I'll try to answer them. --Jim-- ------- 10-Jan-82 22:05:34-PST,1396;000000000001 Mail-from: ARPAnet host RUTGERS rcvd at 10-Jan-82 2205-PST Date: 11 Jan 1982 0058-EST From: COHEN at RUTGERS Subject: z-19 upgrade To: schiffman at SRI-KL I am not sure if the Heath upgrade kit can be used on the Z-19, but I can give you some idea of the process, as I converted my H-19 a few months ago. First, the upgrade kit consists of a new power supply and a cpu board. The power supply that comes with the H-19 is almost completely removed. The cpu board has RAM slots for 48K of memory, but you can piggy back another 16K on top of 1 set of 16K. The standard single side, single density drive that they use is the Siemens FDD-100-5, and there are many places that sell it for less than Heath. Another expense that is probably recommended is the 3 port SIO board. The terminal part of the H-89 talks to the computer board through the terminals UART (at up to 19.2Kb) so once installed, you will need some way to communicate with the outside world. You should also check whether you have the proper proms for running CPM. If you want, I can give you the Heath part numbers for the new proms so that you can check. One thing that you might be interested in, the new power supply can power two 51/4 floppies with no problem, which is useful if you want to expand for the cost of a drive. If you have any other questions, get in touch. Howard Cohen ------- 10-Jan-82 22:32:47-PST,365;000000000001 Date: 10 Jan 1982 2232-PST From: SCHIFFMAN Subject: Thanks for your replies... To: jjd at MIT-MC, cohen at RUTGERS cc: schiffman All replies to my query are being archived in Z19-TO-H89.MAIL which should be FTP'able from SRI-KL with account ANONYMOUS, password GUEST. Does anyone sell the upgrade kit cheaper than Heath? -Allan ------- 11-Jan-82 05:26:19-PST,361;000000000001 Mail-from: ARPAnet host MIT-AI rcvd at 11-Jan-82 0526-PST Date: 11 Jan 1982 0822-EST From: James J. Dempsey Reply-to: JJD at MIT-MC Subject: Re: Thanks for your replies... To: SCHIFFMAN at SRI-KL In-Reply-To: Your message of 11-Jan-82 0457-EST I don't think anyone sells the upgrade kit except heath. --Jim-- ------- 14-Jan-82 05:49:04-PST,3622;000000000001 Mail-from: ARPAnet host BBN-UNIX rcvd at 14-Jan-82 0548-PST Date: 14 Jan 1982 8:43:37 EST (Thursday) From: John Swain Subject: Reply to your message To: schiffman@sri-kl Date: 9 Jan 1982 1918-PST From: SCHIFFMAN at SRI-KL Subject: Upgrading a Z-19 to a H-89 To: info-micro at MIT-MC cc: schiffman at SRI-KL A few questions to those of you who know about the Zenith/Heath machine (please reply to Schiffman@SRI-KL): I have a friend who has a Z-19 and would like to transform it into a CP/M runnable system. 1) Is the Heathkit upgrade package for the H-19 (to convert it to the H-89) equally applicable to the Z-19? (I'm pretty sure that the Z-19 and the H-19A differ only in the nameplate). ------- The Z-19 and H-19 differ in only that one was built in Michigan and the other is a kit. The (A) suffix means that it is an upgrade, and also has a bunch of rf mods in it. It is still functionally the same and can be upgraded with the old kit, but heath will say you have to wait. ------- 2) What does that package consist of? Is it only a handfull of parts or does it include new circuit boards? -------- The package consists of a standard H-88 pc board (CPU), power supply upgrade and fan. All additional hardware to mount the and all wiring to make it work. Also included is the manuals that will be needed. ------- 3) With that upgrade kit, you get 16K of RAM. To get more RAM can you just plug in more chips, or do you need new circuit boards from Heath? -------- To go up to 48K, all you have to do is plug in more ram, and then change jumpers on the cpu card. To go up to 64K, you will have to get an addition PC board from Heath, or else-where, and the prom set. The newer kits, however, already have the proms in them to allow up to 64K. -------- 4) Given that you buy the Heath diskette controller, can you then get the floppies elsewhere (namely are the Heath floppy drives vanilla or are they somehow special)? -------- They are as vanilla as can be. The only thing about the drives that Heath uses, is that they have a 30 ms. step rate, which is slow as hell. The hard sectored controller will support double sided drives, although Heath doesn't support it. There is a device driver from HUG which supports double sided drives on the controller. It will also support high track densitys if you use the HUG device driver. If he is running CP/M, then the BIOS code will have to be modified. -------- Another way to phrase these questions is -- seeing I'm handy with digital electronics and microprocessors, how can I help my friend upgrade his Z-19 for the minimum amount of cash? --------- To give you and idea of what Heath does when you buy a H89, they will send you 4 to 5 boxes of kits. 1 - H19 terminal kit 1 - box containing the CRT tube of your choice 1 - H88-1 upgrade kit 1 - H88-17 Disk controller kit 1 - Floppy disk drive and if you bye the total kit (H89) now they also include 2 - Ram upgrade kits (Total of 48k) 1 - H88-3 Serial I/O controller 1 - Rom upgrade kit to allow 64k As you can see, they just package a h19 with an upgrade kit to make the H89. Good luck. I just finished building one of these about 6 mo. ago. Works well. If you have any more questions, give me a shout. -------- Pointers to documentation will be appreciated. (I've already guessed that buying the upgrade kit manual from Heath for $5 would be a good start). -Allan ------- John Swain (jswain at BBN-UNIX) 3-Feb-82 00:32:32-PST,423;000000000011 Mail-from: ARPAnet host MIT-MC rcvd at 3-Feb-82 0032-PST Date: 3 February 1982 03:32-EST From: Keith B. Petersen Subject: Upgrading a Z-19 to a H-89 To: SCHIFFMAN at SRI-KL I have forwaded your message to INFO-CPM. INFO-MICRO seems to be rather inactive right now (they are looking for a new moderator). Are you on the INFO-CPM mailing list? If not, send a request to INFO-CPM-REQUEST.